Monthly Archives: September 2016

I’m not in my writing room today – sat on the sofa instead, in front of the T.V because I’ve been watching the wonderfulness that is Gogglebox. Last time I watched this, I was in Groningen in Holland, curled up on the sofa with my lovely friend Jan, crying with laughter. It’s not half as fun watching it on my own, although I like the kind of happy/sad feeling I get when I watch it now – happy because now watching that programme reminds me of Jan, and sad because I miss him.

This week I’ve been working on my poem for the BBC and National Poetry Day. I’m writing a poem about Furness Abbey. My deadline was Friday, and I pretty much finished it at about ten minutes to midnight, which was quite stressful, but expected. I always seem to work better under a bit of pressure.

I had a meeting with the committee of A Poem and a Pint, and we put together a list of poets that we’d like to have as our guest poets in 2017. My job now is to contact them all so I’ll probably be getting on with that next week.

On Wednesday, my friend Jennifer Copley had her book launch at Natterjacks. As I mentioned in a blog post a couple of weeks back, her new pamphlet Vinegar and Brown Paper is out with Like This Press. Members of Barrow Writers, the writing group that Jenny runs also read and local musicians The Demix provided the music. Here is a photo of Jenny looking glamorous whilst reading her new poems.

On Thursday I went to Manchester to have another meeting about the teaching. This one was very useful, and I feel reasonably confident about next week. As confident as anyone starting a new job I suppose! I had a brief meeting about my PhD following the meeting about the teaching, but we ran out of time, so have rescheduled for a couple of weeks. My main job between now and then is to get some reading done and start to think about how I want to structure the critical part of the PhD (I think!).

I had my first wobble this week of thinking what on earth have I done, and who am I to think someone like me can do a PhD etc etc. Imposter syndrome already, and I haven’t even had the PhD induction yet – that is the week after next! However, I’ve decided I’m going to get started this week, and the first thing I’m going to do is work out a timetable of when I’m going to be working on PhD stuff this week.

After the meetings I met up with poet Emma McGordon and we made our way up to Black Cat Poets in Denton, where we were both performing. It was a real honour to be reading with Emma – she was one of the first poets I saw perform at A Poem and a Pint and I loved her reading. Her new work is really, really good and it was worth the trip over from Cumbria just to hear her read. The audience at Black Cat Poets was small but perfectly formed, and the organisers and hosts were very friendly. Then it was a late night drive back to Cumbria – I think I got in at about midnight, maybe just after.

I had a Dove Cottage Young Poets session on Friday night. I only have two Young Poets left now – the rest have all gone away to university. I feel very proud of them all, but very sad to see them go. If anybody reading this knows any young people who would be interested in joining a completely free poetry group in Cumbria, do get in touch.

Other writing news – I was very happy that I got a poem shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Competition. This means I got to the top 200 out of 5400 entries apparently, so I didn’t win any money, but it is nice to know that my poem made it to that shortlist.

This weekend I’ve not done any writing or reading really. I’ve just been running and playing the trumpet. I did Park Run on Saturday (22 minutes 15 seconds – 10 seconds off my PB!) and then I had a Soul Band gig on Saturday night. This morning I did a ten mile run and then had two rehearsals for a musical I’m playing in next week in Ulverston: ‘The Wizard of Oz’. So this is why I’m blogging so late today!

I am excited about today’s Sunday Poem. I can’t remember how Lisa Brockwell and I became friends on Facebook – as we’ve never met. Lisa sent me a copy of her new collection Earth Girls a while back though, and I read it cover to cover in one sitting. Earth Girls is published by Pitt Street Poetry, a Sydney based poetry imprint.

Lisa Brockwell was born in Sydney, but spent a large part of her adult life in England. She now lives on a rural property near Byron Bay, on the north coast of New South Wales, with her husband and young son. You can find more about Lisa at her website: www.lisabrockwell.com

I loved this poem as soon as I read it, and felt an instant connection to it. It is easy to list the reasons why this might be – I suppose we all imagine what might have been, what would have happened if we had stayed with this person or that person instead of leaving them, if we had taken that job or refused it. I also like that thread of regret or yearning, which runs through the poem – as I may have said before is one of my favourite emotions to explore in poetry.

That first line is startling in its directness. And the second – that ‘startled but not sorry’. I think that is so brilliantly observed. I love how marriage, or at least a long-term relationship is described as ‘The Long Haul’, and the term ‘day-to-day dedication’ – again, brilliantly, closely observed, and this is exactly what a marriage is. The poem is also wonderfully honest: ‘The air between us no longer electric’. I also love that just at this point when as a reader, I started to forget that what is being described is imaginary, it is then that the story starts to falter: ‘But whose dog jumps/on that bed’.

One of the cleverest things in the poem of course is that it manages to pass comment on two things at the same time. Through describing the imaginary relationship, what might have been, we start to gain a picture of the real relationship, in all its complexity.

There is something beautifully tender as well in the line ‘But when, sometimes, we brush against/each other on-line I feel it and I hope you/ do too’. There isn’t a whiff of betrayal or duplicity in the poem. If there was it would be a less complex poem, a less interesting poem. This poem has been hauting me since Lisa sent me her book, which is a good few months ago now, so I’m really pleased to be able to post it up here.

I hope you enjoy the poem, and if you’d like to order the book, please head over to Pitt Street Poetry

The Long Haul – Lisa Brockwell

There is another life where we end up together.
We wake in the same bed, startled but not sorry;
the timber frame is warm, hand-caulked
with the day-to-day dedication of the long haul.
The air between us no longer electric, all now
sanded smooth. But whose dog jumps
on that bed: yours or mine? I don’t plan to think
about my husband or your wife; let’s leave
my son right out of it. Fantasy, no more dangerous
than eating gelato and dreaming of Mark Ruffalo.
But when, sometimes, we brush against
each other on-line I feel it and I hope you
do too – you could have been my dawn breeze
and me your mast of oak. There is another life
out there. I watch it as it goes, a bobbing toy
with a paper sail, jaunty in calm weather; and wince
to see it tacking close to the mouth of the river.

I’m really excited to announce that Sarah Hymas will be our guest poet for the October Residential Poetry Course.

She is a poet, performer and artistbook maker. Her writing has appeared in print, multimedia exhibits, dance videos, lyrics, pyrotechnical installations, on stage and as an improvised opera.

Host, her poetry collection, is published by Waterloo Press (2010). Her artistbook Lune (2013) was featured in The Guardian Books Blog. Since 2014 she has written immersive stories in Manchester, Lancaster and Marsden, using geocaching, augmented reality, micro print, spoken word and live performance.

She is currently working on another for the Aberdeen Music Hall. In 2015 she collaborated on Ripple, an installation that uses physical poems and augmented reality to illuminate climate change. Her present writing focuses on the sea, its ecosystems and the relationhip between it and us.

Sarah will be joining us for dinner on the Wednesday night of the course, and then reading her work to participants afterwards. There will be time for questions as well, and I think it will be a really interesting discussion. As you can see from Sarah’s biography, her work is very much multi-disciplinary, and she uses both traditional and non-traditional routes to publish her work. You can find more information about Sarah at her website sarahhymas.net or you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahhymas

The October Poetry Residential runs from October 24th-28th 2016. The tutors are myself and Jennifer Copley. The fee of £424 includes accommodation, breakfast and three-course evening meals, all workshops, readings and a tutorial. The hotel has a lovely swimming pool and there will be free time in the afternoon for walks along Grange promenade or time for your own writing. If you have any questions about the course, please get in touch with me directly. If you’d like to book, please phone the hotel on 015395 32896. There are still a few places left, but these are filling up fairly quickly.

Sarah has also asked me to pass on information about a workshop that she is running on Sunday 9th October – please see below!

No view today apart from the dark, and my own reflection in the window, and through the gaps of the houses opposite, I can see a few streetlights, and one window in the house opposite has a light on. It’s only 10.30pm now, but it feels more like 2am, everything is so quiet. When we first moved here two years ago, I couldn’t sleep because it was so quiet. Our first house in Barrow was in a street where you could hear the seagulls all the time, so it took me a while to get used to not hearing them. Now, of course, it’s quite nice not to be divebombed by seagulls between the front door and the car.

Today I went to Lancaster with lots of people from the Walney Wind Cheetahs and took part in the Lancaster Castle 10k, which actually turned into the Lancaster Castle 10.6k, as apparently some directional arrows were turned the wrong way, there were no marshals and lots of people ran the wrong way and got lost. I was a bit gutted because I think I would have got a PB, but I suppose these things can’t be helped. We had a nice day anyway, and I was 6th woman back which I’ve never been before so that was quite exciting!

Getting lost seems to be a theme this week actually, as I also went on a 10 mile run which turned into a 12 mile run on Wednesday with my friend Ian and forgot to turn left at a crucial junction, which meant we had to run an extra two miles and climb up a huge hill again, which nearly finished us off!

Apart from running and getting lost, I’ve also had an Induction Day at Manchester Met this week to prepare for the teaching that I’ll be doing there. I don’t think anything can really prepare you for teaching apart from just getting stuck into it, I guess.

I’ve been working with Pauline Yarwood, the co-director of Kendal Poetry Festival on plans for next year’s festival. We’ve already confirmed some poets (top secret, sorry, can’t tell you who they are) and are waiting to hear back from the remaining few. Pauline’s been working hard on an application to a local charity and we’ve already sent that in. This was the first charity we applied to last year, and when we were awarded the money, it really gave us a boost of confidence to apply for the rest of the amount to the Arts Council. I’m hoping this happens again this year!

Last night it was A Poem and a Pint with the fabulous Hollie McNish. I’ve seen Hollie read a few times now – most recently (before last night) at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. At Aldeburgh she read a poem about class and accents and fitting in which made me cry, which I didn’t expect. To cry, I mean. She is a great performer of her work, not just the poems, but when she introduces them, she is very warm, very open. It is a cliche but she really does feel like a breath of fresh air. She is also a sharp and witty observer of life, or the kind of absurdities of life. She writes poems that flag up things in life that we probably all pretend we don’t notice. Anyway, last night at Poem and a Pint she was brilliant – the audience loved her. I was the MC and kept forgetting to get up and introduce the next item, which is pretty standard for my MCing style!

The other thing I’ve been doing this weekend is painting the downstairs ‘middle room’ as we call it. Do you remember that scene in Adrian Mole’s diary when he decides to paint the walls of his bedroom black to cover up the Noddy wallpaper, and the bells just keep showing through, no matter how many layers of paint he slaps on? Well in my more dramatic moments, this is how I feel about the middle room, except it is white paint, and it is patches, rather than bells. Anyway, Chris has promised that one more coat should do it, so hopefully by this time next weekend, I won’t have to look at another tin of white paint for a while.

Next week there is lots going on. My good friend Jennifer Copley is launching her latest pamphlet Vinegar and Brown Paper, published by Like This Press. The launch will take place at Natterjacks in Ulverston at 7.30 – you can find more information here. Members of Barrow Writers will also be reading and The Demix will be providing some music so it will be a great night!

I’m off to Manchester again on Thursday to have a meeting with one of my supervisors on the PhD. On Thursday evening I’m reading at Black Cat Poets in Manchester, alongside the marvellous Emma McGordon, who was one of the first poets I ever saw read, so I’m quite excited about that! There is also an open mic for anybody that wants to come down and has a couple of poems knocking about that they fancy reading…

I’ve got Dove Cottage Young Poets session on Friday and then a Soul Band gig on Saturday and then rehearsals for The Wizard of Oz start on Sunday. You will be happy to know that I’m not acting, singing or dancing in The Wizard of Oz, only playing the trumpet, which is probably a mercy for us all.

So this week’s Sunday Poem is by Myra Scheider, who has featured on the blog quite a few times in the past. The poem I’ve chosen comes from her latest book Persephone in Finsbury Park, published by Second Light Publications.

Rebecca, the poem I’ve chosen is very representative of Myra’s work. I often come away from Myra’s work knowing a little more than when I arrived – I didn’t for instance know that a pogrom is ‘an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jews in Russia or eastern Europe.’

This word sits in the poem like an undetonated bomb. There is nothing else said about the pogroms, yet that word shadows everything that follows and precedes it. The idealistic rural life filled with cows that Rebecca ‘knew by heart’ contrasts with the new life in Stepney. By the end of the second stanza, there is another story that is mentioned and then never returned to in the poem – the ‘six-year old Judith’ who is ‘scalded to death tipping water from a boiling kettle.’

I wonder if these stories will be developed in later collections or poems. There is certainly a wealth of material here – although of course the story of Judith is alluded to with the story of ‘Isaac’ who wasn’t allowed to play indoors in case he comes to harm – presumably in the same way that Judith did. Although ironically, of course, he suffers the touch of extreme cold, the opposite of what Judith suffered.

The lovely thing about this poem is the surprise that Rebecca is the grandmother of the speaker, and the realisation that this is family history that is being shared.

If you would like to buy a copy of Persephone in Finsbury Park, you can order one from Myra by emailing her at myraRschneider@gmail.com. This is Myra’s 14th poetry collection – previous collections include The Door to Colour, published by Enitharmon in 2014, and Circling the Core in 2008. She also writes prose and edits anthologies and runs creative writing courses .

Thanks to Myra for letting me use her poem this week – if you’d like to find out more about Myra, you can have a look at her website here

Rebecca – Myra Schneider

Somewhere inside me: snippets from her life,
that village a dozen miles from Vitebsk, the cows
she knew by heart, the grocery shop and pogroms

left behind for a cramped existence in Stepney:
families living elbow to elbow, her six-year old Judith
scalded to death tipping water from a boiling kettle.

These scraps and others are in a bundle much smaller
than the bundle of linens she heaved through years
of unpaved streets after her husband died,

selling on the never-never. There’s little Isaac
who couldn’t keep still for a moment, never allowed
indoors on his own – such harm might he come to –

playing outside till her day’s slog was over, in winter
at the mercy of frost which sank its teeth so deep
into his legs the bite was still raw ninety years later.

There’s the tale of how she dug her needle wit
into the boy for fooling in his new secondary school,
being placed twenty-ninth, then of how proud she was

when he became, not the rabbi she’d dreamed of
in the tiny bedroom they shared for years,
but such a scholar he was paid to go to university.

Rebecca, grandmother I never knew, your son
always called you mother – I didn’t learn your name
until seven years after he died – I’m proud of you.

It is glorious sunshine today here, though half of the garden is already in shadow, now that it is mid-afternoon. The hawthorn tree is still covered in red berries, and at the bottom of the garden, the laurel bushes that we chopped down two years ago have grown back to chest height.

Last week was the first full week of the schools being back in action. People keep whether I think I’ll miss it. I don’t feel like I’ve really had time to miss anything yet – although what does feel strange is that the passing of time will not be marked in quite the same way anymore, by school holidays and term times.

Monday night will be difficult, because it’s the first band rehearsal back for Barrow Shipyard Junior Band. I’ve decided to fill up my first free Monday evening to keep my mind off it and stop myself turning up at the bandroom, so I’ll be using my newly bought 1 month gym membership and going for a ‘Total Abs’ session, which I’m sure will take my mind off things. After that I’ve got Soul Band rehearsal, so I’m hoping Monday evening will be over before I know it.

Last week I had another blissful week of not rushing around, although I did work quite hard at my desk. I’m interviewing the American writer Sarah Kennedy for a journal, so I’ve been steadily making my way through her four novels and five poetry collections. I’ve finished the poetry collections and am onto the first novel now. I’ve already got a few questions I want to ask – and it has been a wonderful experience to read all of her work in one go, and to start to pull out threads and concerns that unite both her poetry and her prose.

I’ve also been working on my BBC commission to write a poem in the voice of a local landmark. This is proving challenging (she says, keeping the rising panic from her voice) but I have a little bit of time left still. I’ve also worked on a new poem this week, cheered on by my lovely writing room, and I’ve been reading various poets, looking for someone who is writing about feminism and sexism in a way that might be useful to my PhD.

Other things – a 5k race on Wednesday – 4th female back but no personal best time (missed it by 13 seconds). I ran my Barrow Poetry Workshop all day yesterday – nine participants and the standard was very high. We looked at poems by Jennifer L.Knox, Sharon Olds, Li-Young Lee and Luke Kennard.

After I’d finished the workshop I had an hour to eat and then it was straight back out to Kendal, where I read at Sprint Mill alongside lots of other poets – Hannah Hodgson, Caroline Gilfillan, Mark Carson, Mark Ward, Harriet Fraser, Geraldine Green and Luke Brown. It was organised by Karen Lloyd, who did a wonderful job of hosting, despite having a broken arm. Sprint Mill is a fascinating place, and it is open for the next week or so for visitors as the C-Art exhibition is on.

Next week I have my Induction Day as an Associate Lecturer at MMU. I’m hoping it is not like INSET was as a music teacher (i.e boring). It surely can’t be as bad as that? I’m also the MC for A Poem and a Pint’s next event – the wonderful Hollie McNish will be coming to perform for us in Ulverston on the 17th September. The event is taking place at the Laurel and Hardy Musuem and starts at 7.30pm. There is an open mic, but we’re expecting this event to be busy, so don’t be late!

I’m really excited about this week’s Sunday Poem by the wonderful American poet Linda Gregerson. I wrote a review of Linda’s latest book ‘Prodigal: New and Selected Poems’ for Poem magazine and I’m a huge fan of her work.

Writing out this poem was a wonderful exercise – the lines swoop back and forth, but reading Linda’s work is like reading a musical score. The form of the tercet, with its short ‘pivot’ line in the middle, is a structure that Linda comes back to again and again. The suffering of children, and how to witness suffering is another topic that she returns to.

This was one of the poems that I picked out in the review – it feels when you are reading it that you are discovering something along with the writer. I only just noticed in the poem the three colours of traffic lights, in order at the end – finishing with the ‘bright red helmet.’ The craft of this poem is at work underneath the surface, so those phrases that loop back and forth feel effortless. I also love the asides that Linda uses in this poem and throughout her work – I think they work to draw the reader in, but they are also beautifully measured and paced.

I would really recommend Linda’s book – if you’d like to read the full review of the book, you can subscribe to Poem – you’ll also find fantastic poetry and essays in this magazine, edited by Fiona Sampson.

Linda Gregerson’s honours include a Guggenheim fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Kingsley Tufts Award, and the selection of her collection Magnetic North as a National Book Award finalist. Gregerson is a professor at the University of Michigan. Her poetry has appeared in the Atlantic, The New Yorker, Poetry, the Yale Review and many other publications. She lives in Michigan.

You can order her book Prodigal: New and Collected Poems here. Thanks to Linda for allowing me to use her wonderful poem this week.

The Resurrection of the Body – Linda Gregerson)))))((for Caroline Bynum

She must have been thirteen or so, her nascent************breasts******just showing above the velcro strap

that held her in her chair.*************Her face******translucent, beautiful,

as if a cheekbone might directly render*************a tranquil******heart. And yet

the eyes were all dis-************quietude.*****The mother with her miraculous

smile, frequent, durable, lifted************the handkerchief-*****you know the way a woman

will? – her index finger guiding a corner,************the body of it gathered*****in her dextrous palm – and with

such tenderness wiped the spittle************pooling*****at her daughter’s mouth. The faint

warm smell of lipstick – remember? – freighted************with love,*****and with that distillate left by fear

when fear’s been long outdone by fearful************fact.*****The mother would give her soul to see

this child lift her head on her own.************And down*****the hall in orthotics,

I couldn’t for the longest time understand************why the boy*****required a helmet so complexly fitted

and strong – his legs were unused, his arms************so thin.*****A treadmill, I thought. Or a bicycle, maybe, some

bold new stage of therapy anyway, sometimes************he falls*****and, safe in his helmet, can bravely

set to work again. It wasn’t for nothing************that I was*****so slow. Who cannot read those waiting rooms

has so far – exactly so far – been spared.************It was only*****while I was driving home,

my daughter in her car seat with her brand-************new brace,*****that I thought of the boy’s rhythmic rocking

and knew. Green light. Yellow. The tide************of pedestrians*****flush and smooth. And the boy’s

poor head against the wall – how could I miss it?************and what*****does God in his heaven do then? – and the boy’s

poor head in its bright red helmet knocking –************listen –*****to be let in.

I’m writing this in my still-lovely writing room. It’s now finished! I put another floor-to-ceiling cupboard in yesterday and filled it with various bits, so now, although it’s small, I’ve got floor space to scoot around on my office chair. I’m working so much better in here. I’ve decreed that Chris has to knock if the door is shut and it feels like a little haven. My desk is right in front of the window so I have a view of the back garden and the hawthorn tree, covered at the moment in red berries, and the houses behind ours, covered in scaffolding because they are getting their roof redone.

My legs feel pleasantly tired and aching as I did the Burton-in-Kendal 10k race today. The course was pretty brutal – a fast downhill start and then a steep hill for about a kilometre, and then I would describe the rest of the course as ‘undulating’. I managed it in 48 minutes and 10 seconds – nowhere near my personal best of 46:16 but I am fairly happy with my time.

Last week was fairly quiet in terms of freelance work. I didn’t have any readings or workshops, or anywhere to be apart from soul band rehearsal on Monday night and the studio on Wednesday night to record a demo for Dave McGerty, the keyboard player in the Soul Survivors. He’s been asked to write a song by a very well known soul singer, so we were in the studio recording it on Wednesday. Here’s a picture of the brass section with our headphones on.

One exciting thing that happened is that I’ve been commissioned by the BBC and National Poetry Day to write a poem in the voice of a landmark in Cumbria. The poem will be broadcast on BBC Cumbria on October 6th which is National Poetry Day. I’m quite nervous about this, as I haven’t done very many commissions so who knows how it is going to turn out. I did spend a lot of time last week visiting my landmark and trying to soak up some atmosphere though, and I started an idea which I think might work. I haven’t looked at this idea since Friday though, as I’m following my own advice and leaving it to ‘cook’ in my notebook for a couple of days.

This week has been a good insight into what doing a PhD might feel like though. I’ve spent a lot of the week in my pyjamas, at my writing desk, reading and writing, and making notes on what I’ve been reading. If I haven’t been in my pyjamas, then I’ve been in my running shorts – as usual, my life seems made up of extremes!

Another strange thing that happened – I turned down some freelance work this week! I realised it’s the first time I’ve ever done that, as a writer. The project sounded really exciting, but it was a massive time commitment. I think if I’d flogged myself this term I could have managed it, as well as the freelance work I’ve already got booked in, as well as the PhD, but I realised that the point of getting funding is so that I don’t have to work myself into the ground taking on everything that comes in. It is hard turning things down though! I love working as a writer, but it felt strangely liberating to commit instead to writing, to the act of writing, rather than the act of being a poet, which is very different.

I’ve just booked my train tickets for the Poetry Swindon Festival, taking place in October. I read in Swindon a couple of years ago now, and I’m really looking forward to going back as one of two Poet in Residences (the other is the marvellous Andrew McMillan). I’m reading on the 6th October with a wonderful poet called Michael Scott and running workshops on the 7th and 9th October. You can find more information about all of the events and the poets who are reading here.

This week’s Sunday Poem is a poet called Cheryl Pearson, who I got talking to on Twitter, so we’ve never actually met in real life! I asked Cheryl to send me some poems to consider for the blog and she sent me wonderful poems to choose from. Which was a relief!

I loved her poem ‘The Victor’ as soon as I read it – it seemed full of mystery, and the images and her language surprised me all the way through. I imagine the ‘her’ of a poem is a bear, although this is never actually spelled out. I’ve never seen salmon described as ‘fat hammers’ but I think it works. The bear, if bear it is, is humanised with the ‘Ankle-deep’ reference, which was one of the places that made me wonder if it is a bear. The next line is surprising as well – the fish ‘caught her eye like a hook’ – this is one of the surprises I’m talking about. The next line makes me think definitely bear – the ‘great fur heft of her’ as well as the reference to a planet – that made me think of the Great Bear and the Little Bear constellations. Then in the next line she turns this around again – the bear is a star, and the fish are smaller stars. Then the fish become a ‘book of matches’ and here I think the poem soars off. What a wonderful line ‘death brightening each tooth’. It is one of those lines that I wish I’d written! And a fantastic ending to the poem – the ‘last lost race’ of the fish.

I’m really looking forward to reading Cheryl’s first full collection, which is forthcoming in Spring 2017 with Pindrop Press. I hope when it comes out I can wrangle another poem out of Cheryl, as I’m sure the book will be great, if the small selection of poems she sent through is anything to go by.

Cheryl lives and writes in Manchester. Her poems have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Envoi, Antiphon, and Skylark Review (Little Lantern Press). She placed third in Bare Fiction Magazine’s 2016 Poetry Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Princemere Poetry Prize and the York Literature Festival Poetry Prize.

You can find more of Cheryl’s work at the Bare Fiction website and she is also on Twitter as @cherylpea

Thanks to Cheryl for letting me use her wonderful poem, and for getting in touch.

The VictorCheryl Pearson

I saw her catching salmon in July – fat hammers that gleamed and beat
against the river where she waited, still as a boulder. Patient. Ankle-deep.
Until that one fish caught her eye like a hook, and she leaped –

the great fur heft of her crashing like a planet from the clear sky

to stun against the rock that smaller star. I watched as fish after fish
went dark, a book of matches struck and snuffed. One by one,

light by light. Later, I would see their radiance again, like a memory:

death brightening each tooth, the way skulls might brighten a hunter’s belt –
fishscales, shining in her mouth like a brace. I would see the fish in her belly,

griping, stripped. Her mouth lit with trophies from their last, lost race.